


Cold Confetti

by Previously8



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Also hot chocolate, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Snow, Snowball Fight, some kissing too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 05:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17912744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Previously8/pseuds/Previously8
Summary: "For the first time in Dave’s life, he wakes up to snow. "Or, it's the first winter on Earth C after the game and Dave has feelings about the things he never knew he had been missing.





	Cold Confetti

**Author's Note:**

> It's been forever since I posted, but here, have 4k of fluff and melancholy reminiscing that I wrote after NaNo this year. Stay warm friends, winter is long. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy :)

For the first time in Dave’s life, he wakes up to snow. 

It’s six-oh-nine in the morning. His feet feel like they’ve grown into icicles overnight, though that’s understandable: His usual space heater is curled up with most of the blankets on the other half of their bed. They had fallen asleep spooning, but Karkat must have migrated away during the night, blankets clenched in his fists and drawn tight around his shoulders, so that Dave is now left with chilled toes and a nose that is half of a degree colder than the rest of his face. 

Dave understands, though, that when you run as warm as Karkat does, the cold tends to affect you more. Karkat’s happiest when the sun is shining and the humans are busy getting sunburnt, and bundles up at the smallest sign of cold. Years of sweaters on the meteor stood to show for that. Dave shuffles further under the blankets—knit ones from Rose’s collection that Dave has never been more grateful for—and closer to Karkat. Even from inches away, Karkat practically radiates heat. Dave hesitates for a second before getting closer, because he always does and isn’t sure how not to.

It’s in the moment of hesitation, the worry that he’s going to be victim to someone’s judgement besides his own, that he notices the snow.

They have a window on the wall next to their bed. Outside, it’s a grey dawn just blooming over the far hills and the cylindrical houses that form Can Town. It’s overcast, and through the window, Dave can see thick white flakes falling to the ground. 

Dave sits up, his chill forgotten.

Snow.

He gets out of bed softly and goes to the window. The floor is cold to the touch, but Dave’s eyes are following the heavy flakes coming down from the sky. There’s already a thin layer of snow on the ground outside, covering the grass in patches on the rolling hills, and accumulating on the street below. It looks fluffy, softer than Dave had imagined it would be. It looks unreal. 

Even as his infallible internal clock reminds him that it’s only six-fourteen in the morning, which usually means sleep, he can’t help but stay and stare a minute. 

The flakes start falling more quickly.

“Dave?” Karkat’s groggy half-growling morning voice asks from the bed. Dave lets his gaze be drawn from the weather outside the window to the troll still bundled up in their bed. Karkat is blinking slowly, not entirely awake. He props himself halfway up on one elbow and squints at Dave. “Are you okay?”

Dave nods silently. 

Karkat blinks again and catches sight of the outside, “oh, it’s snowing. Weird.”

And that’s just the thing, isn’t it? It’s snowing. 

It’s not that Dave doesn’t know what snow is, and not even that he’s never seen it before. Though he can’t remember a time that it snowed in Houston while he lived there, back on Earth, he had seen movies, not to mention weather reports from other states. Hell, even some of the planets that he visited while wandering aimlessly through the dreambubbles had some form of snow-like substance (though it usually just looked like snow, and was actually sugar, or cotton, or some equally ridiculous substance to make the ground out of). All to say-- Dave has been exposed to similar weather phenomena, before. 

But standing at the window in the early morning light, Dave realises that he’s never seen it this up close and personal. It’s never fallen close enough for him to touch, or breathe in, or get cold from. He’s never stepped in it. He’s never experienced _real_ snow. 

(And it feels strange. It feels like one of the many, many things that he hadn’t known he was missing until he played the game. Things like chocolate milk, or like human contact, that only made an entrance into his life after the world ended. It feels weird that he’s getting this quintessentially human experience only now, that he’s living on Earth C with a bunch of aliens. How is it that he only gets to know these things _after_? Rose would surely have something to say about the impact of the before and after mindset on his mental state, but Dave would tune it out anyway.) 

“Dave?” Karkat prompts again. Dave looks back at him. He looks more awake, which is no good: He’d only come to sleep late into the night, and long after Dave had already fallen asleep. Dave feels a little guilty; Karkat always needs all the sleep he can get.

Dave glances out the window one more time at the swirling flakes from the sky, and pads back over to the bed. He crawls in, facing Karkat, and pulls the covers over his shoulders. 

He sticks his cold toes on Karkat’s shins. Karkat jumps, and glares at Dave. “That’s cold, asshole.”

“Hey, you stole the blankets first. _That’s_ cold, dude,” Dave tells him without menace. Karkat rolls his eyes a little.

They’re inches apart like this, curled facing each other. Dave takes a second to bask in the warmth and stare. From so close, he can see the small veins of red that are beginning to shoot into the grey of Karkat’s irises. Soon enough, they’ll look a lot like Dave’s. There is a darker grey colouration splashed across his cheeks that would resemble freckles, if trolls had freckles. Dave feels greedy, looking like this. It feels like a special treat, to just be able to let himself stare at Karkat unabashedly, their breath mingling in the space between them. He feels sometimes like he’s waiting for the bill, the universe’s invoice for being so lucky and getting so much.

As Dave stares, and breathes, and stares, a light flush rises to Karkat’s face. Dave can feel his cheeks warm too, though he’s not embarrassed, just… close.

“Hey,” Dave says quietly into the space between them. 

“Hey,” Karkat answers. He has a small half-smile playing on his lips. He places a warm hand on Dave’s waist, as though to remind him to stay near.

Karkat leans in to close the distance between them slowly, his eyes on Dave’s. Dave gets the impression that Karkat is giving him all the time he might need to back out. Karkat probably knows that something is a little bit off, even if he doesn’t know what exactly that is this morning. Dave is grateful for it. He meets Karkat’s lips with his own. 

It’s not a deep kiss, just a soft one. It feels like indulgence, a gift to Dave’s interminable greed. 

Karkat’s lips are much warmer than his own. He pulls back half of an inch. “You’re really cold,” Karkat tells him.

Dave gives a small shrug. He can’t see the snow now; his back is to it. All the same, he can picture it, twirling down from the thick cloud cover like white tissue paper confetti, only colder. 

“Did you have snow?” He asks after a beat. 

Karkat considers. “Not really,” he says, tangling their feet together. His are so much warmer than Dave’s that his start to tingle at the touch. “I lived in a pretty moderate climate. We got some, every year, but to Crabdad it was just another hazard. I didn’t see it much.” He blinks at Dave. “Why?”

“I’ve just never seen snow like this,” Dave admits. He doesn’t manage to fight the urge this time, and looks back over his shoulder toward the window. Thick white flakes are sticking to the glass now, as they swirl past, buffeted by the wind. Would it be cold outside? Dave can’t imagine it. What does snow feel like?

He tries to imagine what it would be like to be in a blizzard. Would you even see anything through the flakes? Or would it be like sheets of rain so heavy it fell like a bath rather than a shower? Would it make sound, like rain did? He has a rich imagination, but the images that come to mind don’t feel like they could be real. 

Karkat hums beside him. “We should make a snowtroll.”

Dave had actually almost forgotten about things like that. Snowmen, snowball fights, igloos… All the standard winter things that never existed in a Houston apartment. Rose, and even more so John, had always talked about winters full of time outside in the snow. John went skating at the neighbourhood park every day that he could, and Rose knew how to ski. Funny, how many things that you never think to do if you never see snow. 

“Let’s do it,” Dave agrees, turning back to Karkat. 

“What, now?” Karkat sounds more than a little indignant, but more awake. “What time even is it?”

“Six thirty-one. Time to seize the day.”

Karkat rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile curving at the sides of his mouth. “This is unreasonable. I want a refund.” He holds Dave tighter, though, a direct conflict with his words. 

“I can make hot chocolate after,” Dave bargains. He knows that he’s already won, as Karkat rolls his shoulders and flexes his toes against Dave’s ankles. “The real good shit, with marshmallows.”

Karkat ducks forward and presses a light kiss at the corner of Dave’s mouth, muttering, “well, if there’s marshmallows…” 

“Fuck yeah there’s marshmallows,” Dave agrees and throws off the covers. Karkat squawks in a truly hilarious way when he’s exposed to the cold air. He sits up and frowns at Dave, who climbs out of bed, snatching his shades as he goes. 

There’s a childlike sense of joy growing in Dave’s veins. It’s like fizzy candy, sparking through him and making him feel more than a little effervescent. 

(In fact, it’s almost like the juju that Calliope has tucked away in the terrible lollipop. It’s a sense of elation that is hard to parallel and to evade, that makes everything, even cold floors and early mornings, feel alright. The difference of course, is that he’ll remember this all afterwards without a wicked hangover, and, more importantly, the fizzy happiness isn’t the fault of some cherub drug.)

Karkat grumbles to himself but pulls on socks and changes a large sweater, and a pair of dark jeans.

Dave only owns sneakers, so he puts those on and skids downstairs. He’s ready to leave, standing on their only half-ironic welcome mat just inside the front door with the excitement in his veins still bubbling. He bounces on his heels a little, and shoves his hands in his pockets, waiting for Karkat to be done getting ready.

Karkat emerges from down the hall and Dave realises why it had taken him longer to get ready: Karkat is bundled up to the max. He’s wearing a large grey winter jacket, a knit scarf (that, come to think of it, was probably a gift from Rose. Dave will have to find some way to one), and large mittens. He’s dwarfed by his large clothing and shuffles down the hall.

“I want to be warm,” Karkat tells him seriously as he shoves on a pair of boots that Dave didn’t know he owned. 

Dave quirks an eyebrow over his shades in a way he knows is infuriating to Karkat. “C’mon, it can’t be that cold.”

Karkat crosses his arms with some difficulty and says, “let’s just go outside to deal with your snow fixation. I won’t be the one complaining tomorrow.” He opens the door and steps out. 

A chill wind flows over Dave. He shivers, but quickly forgets as he stares at the snow, close enough to touch. Karkat’s boots leave the first set of footprints on the two inches of crisp white fluff that is lying on the ground. Everything looks pristine. In the early morning light, the crystals of snow look like they’re sparkling. Dave feels like Rose would have something to say about vampires and Earth’s young adult fiction at the comparison, but he doesn’t let the thought bother him. 

It's quiet, too. It’s like someone has put earmuffs on the whole grey and white landscape. Sounds are muffled. He feels like they should be whispering or something.

“Aren’t you coming outside?” Karkat calls from halfway to the street, and Dave almost jumps at the sudden sound. Karkat has his hands on his hips and a pout. “If you made me get all the way out here for some stupid Egbert prank—"

“Yeah, yeah,” Dave says. He steps out and closes the door. The snowflakes are still drifting down, albeit more slowly than earlier. He holds out a hand and lets some fall onto his skin. They melt into water immediately on contact. 

Curious, he crouches and sticks his hand in the snow in the ground. “Eugh, it’s wet,” he says, withdrawing it quickly. His hand is dripping and the snow on his knuckles is melting. His skin is already growing red from the cold. Maybe mittens would have been smart, after all. 

Karkat laughs. “Duh, it’s frozen water, dumbass.” 

Dave wipes his hand on his pants, feeling a little stupid. Obviously, it was water. He’d just never really thought about it. Besides, it looked so soft—how was he to know what it would feel like. He shoves his hands in his pocket and walks further from the house.

He’s looking out down the street, trying to take it in, when something hits him in the shoulder. Dave looks down to see a wet patch of snow on his hoodie. “What the fuck?”

Karkat is grinning at him, teeth bared. “Got you,” he says. “You’re way too serious right now.”

“What the fuck,” Dave repeats. “Is that Egbert I hear? Who are you and what have you done with Karkat?”

Another snowball hits him in the shoulder, Karkat is already forming another. Dave quickly scoops up his own handful. It’s soft, and doesn’t form much of a ball at first, falling apart in his hands. He packs it together, and somewhere between the melting caused by his hands and the pressure forms it into a wonky ball--- nothing like the perfect orb-shaped objects in movies. 

He throws it at the same time that Karkat throws his. He flashsteps away so that he doesn’t get hit again— stepping straight into the deeper snow, a foot to the left. 

“That’s no fair,” Karkat complains, wiping the last of Dave’s snowball off of his jacket with a mitten. 

“Life’s not fair.” Dave finds himself smiling slightly as he reaches down for another handful with his bare hands. 

Karakt whips a lump of snow at him that hits him in the back. It’s not at all well-packed and explodes, sending wet flecks of snow onto Dave’s neck. He wipes at them with a sleeve. 

The weird melancholy appreciation he had for the snow feels like it’s mostly gone. Sure, he still feels, maybe more than ever like he’d definitely missed out back on Earth before it got nixed. He never got to play like this, much less with frozen water. At the same time, he knows he missed out on a lot of things and that this is just one of the activities that he gets to add to his catalogue of cool new ones. He’s grateful, maybe a little bit, that snow wasn’t something he learned to hate like everything else in Houston. 

It helps too that the snow is pretty different than he expected: less like the fluff used to stuff puppets and more like a cold, wet, disaster. His sneakers are already soaked through, and his jeans are soaked to the knees. 

He scoops up another handful and packs it into a ball.

Soon enough, the two of them aren’t throwing even, nicely formed snowballs anymore, and just whipping handfuls of snow off the ground in each other’s direction. Dave manages to get a handful right in Karkat’s face. He only gets a few seconds to admire the shocked way that Karkat is blinking, and the snow crystals that fall off of his face before Karkat is coming at him with a vengeance. 

Dave ends up laughing, hard enough that he doesn’t manage to flashstep or to float away when Karkat comes at him with a mitten full of snow that he dumps directly on Dave’s head. Some falls down the back of Dave’s shirt and he stumbles, grabbing onto Karkat so he doesn’t topple. “Shit that’s cold.”

He’s still holding onto Karkat, who grabbed him back at the last minute. There’s some snow in Karkat’s hair, small flakes that haven’t melted yet. Dave brushes them away with one hand. 

“Your lips are turning blue,” Karkat tells him with a small grin. “It’s not a good look.”

“Oh, damn,” Dave says. 

It’s quiet again, nothing is disturbing the snow except them. 

Karkat is still staring at him, and something in his expression makes Dave think _soft_. Sometimes, he feels like even with the shades on Karkat can sometimes see through them. He doesn’t remove his other hand from its place clutching Karkat’s coat as he lifts to push his shades up on his head. 

He blinks at the sudden brightness and looks back down at Karkat, who is staring up at him with one of the expressions that Dave has seen before, but it always too scared to dive into. Dave shifts his eyes elsewhere. There’s a small bead of melted snow rolling down Karkat’s forehead. Dave would wipe it off if his hands weren’t so wet. 

Behind Karkat, the lawn is a mess of foot prints and gouges where handfuls have been taken. The sun is almost up now, and it’s stopped snowing. Dave gets the feeling that it’ll start again soon, though. He almost misses it.

“We should head inside,” Karkat suggests quietly. 

Dave snaps his eyes back to Karkat’s. “What?”

“It’s really fucking cold,” Karkat mutters. He kicks some snow lightly in Dave’s direction. “And you’re going to die of some human cold-sickness if we stay out here any longer.”

“Am not,” Dave says to be contrary. He doesn’t actually want to stay outside, though. The chill from his wet socks is getting to him, not to mention the fact that his hoodie is soaked. Karkat frowns up at him, probably gauging if he’s serious or not. Dave dips his head but stops just shy of kissing Karkat. Karkat meets his eyes across the inches and leans in to seal their lips. 

It’s a short kiss, and Dave feels giddy when Karkat pulls away. It’s like affirmation that he’s allowed to just have this now. “Your lips are cold, holy shit,” Karkat says. He drops his hand to Dave’s and Dave lets himself be pulled back towards the house. 

It’s a relief, when they get inside, to change back into warmer, less wet clothes. Dave ends up in some sweats and a sweater that he doesn’t realise isn’t his until he already has it on. It’s a little too large for him in the shoulders, making the sleeves dip down past his hands. It’s comfortable. He debates taking it off—he knows that Karkat and most other trolls are possessive of their clothing. At the same time, Dave remembers the look on Karkat’s face, when he’d accidentally chosen a pair of socks that weren’t his own once and has a feeling that Karkat won’t mind too much. Dave leaves it on with a shrug. 

He hesitates again, shades in hand. He doesn’t feel like he needs to wear them nearly as often as he used to, anymore. That’s not to say that he doesn’t still love to wear them for the sake of the irony, and for the sake of tradition, but that he’s also learning to be comfortable without them. Rose was the first to point out how much he used them as a crutch—something he didn’t realize until they were removed for the first time. He waits only a second longer before hooking them into his collar and goes to join Karkat in the kitchen.

Karkat looks up when he comes in, pausing with a spoon in hand. Dave thinks that he notices the sweater but he chooses not to comment on the small smile that Karkat tries to hide even as he turns to stir the mugs of hot chocolate. 

Karkat passes him his own and takes a seat at the table, too. “Is it normal for humans to turn purple like that?” 

Dave shakes his head. “Nah, that’s just for when we get really cold. The blood leaves the surface of our skin to help out our organs and shit.” He supposes that a species with black lips wouldn’t really think about that. 

“Huh,” Karkat says, squinting at his lips a little. “It makes sense, but it’s still weird.”

“You know my biology is cooler than yours,” Dave says, and takes a sip of the hot cocoa. “Humans turn all sorts of wicked colours.” The first time Dave had bruised, Karkat had been fascinated. 

Karkat rolls his eyes. He taps his claws against his mug and takes a long slurp. Dave can see that he wants to ask something, by the glances he keeps shooting Dave over his hot chocolate, but that he’s waiting to see if Dave will bring it up first. He knows he’s been acting off all morning but doesn’t necessarily want to push into the conversation—always giving Dave an out.

“We didn’t get snow in Texas,” Dave offers, finally.

“Too hot outside?” Karkat has tried to understand Earth’s climate more than a few times. Dave has made an effort too, but it’s not as though Karkat was privy to much of Alternian geography when he couldn’t leave his house. It’s an effort in futility, trying to understand planets that have vanished with barely a trace.

“Yeah,” Dave says. He looks down at his drink. “I didn’t know what I was missing.” It feels like a confession. Like something more serious than it sounds. Dave wants to take it back once it’s said, like somehow he can shove it back in his mouth and stop a heavy thought in its tracks. The initial heaviness he’d felt, before the effervescence has returned to press on his chest. 

Karkat hums. “I get that. It’s weird that your first time seeing snow is after, y’know, you never thought you would have a chance to.”

Dave doesn’t know exactly what about this morning has triggered a memory for Karkat, but he knows that Karkat may as well have read his mind. 

Isn’t that just the thing, though? Karkat gets it. Karkat has always understood. The melancholy and irrational homesickness for a place you didn’t and don’t ever want to return to is buried under Karkat’s skin just like under Dave’s own. Even though Texas was a nightmare, even though Alternia wanted him dead, the places you knew stick with you. It feels like a trap, sometimes. Like something is waiting to drop the bomb, for you to think it just wasn’t that bad enough times to justify sending you back. And all this as though you don’t logically know that it was shitty despite how much you sometimes miss the smell of hot tarmac or microwave popcorn or everything and anything... 

More than anything, it’s missing the could have beens. More and more, as the world is reinventing itself, the could-have-beens pop up and Dave can’t help but wonder what would have happened, _if_ — It’s like missing the things that you never did, and that you didn’t think you had lacked in the first place, only to find out how substantial of a gap they had left—

So yeah, Karkat gets it. And if that doesn’t take a weight off Dave’s shoulders, then nothing could. 

He stares at Karkat over the rim of his mug. Karkat looks just as lost in thought, if not more. 

“Hey.” Karkat looks up at him. “Thanks,” Dave says, and means it.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment to let me know what you thought! Thanks for reading!!
> 
> >>>join me on tumblr everythingsdifferentupsidedown.tumblr.com


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